One thing that a lot of people don’t notice is that this is the result of mass manufacturing replacing craft. People want good products that are cheap, and mass manufacturing creates them. Things made in a factory at scale are always cheaper and can even be better quality than low-scale goods. But once companies have sunk the capital into the factory that can churn this stuff out, they want to keep making the same stuff, not retooling and redesigning the factory. So minor changes occur but the basic template becomes very rigid. Once you start looking for it the factory-goods stubbornness to change is everywhere.
I think this is just the consequence of making things at scale. Society as a whole benefits: most people have more and better stuff relative to their wealth level than people in the past. But craftsmanship disappears or becomes substantially more expensive, and with it the diversity and range of design fades away.
To use Loos's example, the original mass manufactured table was sturdy and practical. Its simple design meant that it would not to the fickle changes in fashion. This was the positive promise of mass manufacturing.
There's no natural law that scaling up production should imply that things are of lower quality. Yet, that's where we are.
I think this is just the consequence of making things at scale. Society as a whole benefits: most people have more and better stuff relative to their wealth level than people in the past. But craftsmanship disappears or becomes substantially more expensive, and with it the diversity and range of design fades away.